Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Parkes, the well-known novelist of the psychological school, was born at Louisville, Kentucky, August 6, 1862. She was taken from Louisville as a young child by her parents for the reason that her father had built a house on Staten Island, where she lived until her eleventh year, when she went to her grandmother's at Zanesville, Ohio, to attend Putnam Female Seminary, an institution of some renown, where her aunts on both sides of the house had received their training. Mrs. Gano, the one fine character of Miss Robins's first successful novel, The Open Question, is none other than her own grandmother, Jane Hussey Robins, to whom she dedicated the story; and the house in which she lived is faithfully described in that story. In 1874, when she was twelve years of age, Miss Robins made her first visit to Kentucky since having left the State some years before; and she has been back many times since, her latest visit being made in 1912. Her mother and many of her kinsfolk are buried in Cave Hill cemetery; and her brother, uncle, and other relatives, including Charles Neville Buck, the young Kentucky novelist, reside at Louisville. She is, therefore, a Kentuckian to the core. On January 12, 1885, she was married to George Richmond Parkes, of Boston, who died some years ago. While passing through London, in 1889, Mrs. Parkes decided it was the most pleasing city she had seen, and she established herself there. She now maintains Backset Town Farm, Henfield, Sussex; and a winter home at Chinsegut, Florida. Mrs. Parkes won her first fame as an actress, appearing in several of Ibsen's plays, and attracting wide attention for her work in The Master Builder, especially. While on the stage she began to write under the pen-name of "C. E. Raimond," so as not to confuse the public mind with her work as an actress; and this name served her well until The Open Question appeared, at which time it became generally understood that the actress and author were one and the same person. She soon after began to write under her maiden name of Elizabeth Robins—and thus confounded herself with the wife of Joseph Pennell, the celebrated American etcher. With her long line of novels Miss Robins takes her place as one of the foremost writers Kentucky has produced. A full list of them is: George Mandeville's Husband (New York, 1894); The New Moon (New York, 1895); Below the Salt (London, 1896), a collection of short-stories, containing, among others, The Fatal Gift of Beauty, which was the title of the American edition (Chicago, 1896); The Open Question (New York, 1898). Miss Robins was friendly with Whistler, the great artist, and he designed the covers for Below the Salt and The Open Question, a morbid but powerful novel. She has been especially fortunate in seizing upon a subject of vital, timely importance against which to build her books; and that is one of the real reasons for her success. What the public wants is what she wants to give them. When gold was discovered in the Klondike, and all the world was making a mad rush for those fields, Miss Robins wrote The Magnetic North (New York, 1904). That fascinating story was followed by A Dark Lantern (New York, 1905), "a story with a prologue;" The Convert (New York, 1907), a novel based upon the suffragette movement in London, with which the author has been identified for seven years, and for which she has written more, perhaps, than any one else; Under the Southern Cross (New York, 1907); Woman's Secret (London, 1907); Votes for Women: A Play in Three Acts (London, n. d. [1908]), a dramatization of The Convert, produced by Granville Barker at the Court Theatre, London, with great success. The title of this play, if not the contents, has gone into the remotest corners of the world as the accepted slogan of the suffragette cause. Come and Find Me! (New York, 1908), another story of the Alaska country, originally serialized in The Century Magazine; The Mills of the Gods (New York, 1908); The Florentine Frame (New York, 1909); Under His Roof (London, n. d. [1910]), yet another short-story of the suffragette struggle in London, printed in an exceedingly slender pamphlet; and Why? (London, 1912), a brochure of questions and answers concerning her darling suffragettes. Upon these books Elizabeth Robins has taken a high place in contemporary letters. Her very latest story is My Little Sister, based upon a background of the white slave traffic in London, the shortened version of which appeared in McClure's Magazine for December, 1912, concluded in the issue for January, 1913, after which it will be published in book form in America under the original title; but the English edition will bear this legend, "Where Are You Going To?" When the first part of this strong story was printed in McClure's it attracted immediate and very wide attention, and again illustrated the ancient fact concerning the author's novels: her ability to make use of one of the big questions of the day as a scene for her story. Another book on woman's fight for the ballot, to be entitled Way Stations may be published in March, 1913. Miss Robins is the ablest woman novelist Kentucky has produced; but her short-stories are not comparable to Mrs. Andrew's.
Bibliography. The Critic (June, 1904); The Bookman (November, 1907); McClure's Magazine (December, 1910); Harper's Magazine (August, 1911).
A PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT[35]
[From The Florentine Frame (New York, 1909)]
Mrs. Roscoe invoked the right manager. The Man at the Wheel was not only accepted, it was announced for early production. Special scenery was being painted. The rehearsals were speedily in full swing. The play had been slightly altered in council—one scene had been rewritten.
Generously, Keith made his acknowledgements. "I should not have gone at it again, but for you," he told Mrs. Roscoe. "It had got stale—I hated it, till that day I read it to you."
She smiled. "Nobody needs an audience so much as a dramatist. I was audience."
"You brought the fresh eye, you saw how the scène à faire could be made more poignant. Do you know," he said in that way he was getting into, re-envisaging with this companion some old outlook, "I sometimes feel the only difference between the poor thing and the good thing is that in one, the hand fell away too soon, and in the other it was able to give the screw just one more turn. You practically helped me to give the final turn that screwed the thing into shape."
She shook her head, and then he told her that after a dozen rebuffs he had made up his mind to abandon the play that very day he and the Professor had talked of cinque cento ivories.
It was not unnatural that the scant cordiality of Mrs. Mathew, whenever Keith encountered that lady at her sister's house, was insufficient to make him fail in what he acknowledged to Fanshawe as a sort of duty. This was: keeping Mrs. Roscoe fully informed of all the various stages in the contract-negotiation, the cast decisions, and the checkered fortunes of rehearsal.